


A Million Words

by Strawberry_Sweetheart



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Death, Depression, Domestic Violence, Drinking, Drunken rage, Hostage Situation, M/M, Max Centric, Murder, Murder-Suicide, chatty Steve, idk what else umm, mentions of bad hygiene, ptsd mutism, selective mutism, strained sibling relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:48:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28136457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strawberry_Sweetheart/pseuds/Strawberry_Sweetheart
Summary: Max watches Neil Hargrove, in a drunken rage, kill her mother. Everything after that if blur.In which Billy and Steve are the only family she has left, and she’s grateful for them even if she struggles to say the simple words of “thank you”.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 3
Kudos: 64





	A Million Words

It’s crazy how fast things can change.

It’s even crazier to think that something so… That something so…

Unimaginable could happen.

It was sunny that day, you know? The type of day where you’d like to stand in the warm sun and soak up its heat for a while like a content cat without a care in the world. Not a cloud in an ever blue sky. Slow and lazy the time seemed to pass, every tick of the clock seemed to drag on forever, but there was such a peace in the air that Steve didn’t mind that at all.

The type of day you’d wish it’d last forever.

And then in the worst way, in the most impossible way, it almost did after an abrupt phone call, deafening in the silence of that Saturday morning. Time stopped for them at 7 o’clock in the morning by a voice delivering the most unimaginable news with practiced formality. Billy was still in his pajamas, in that horrendous faded red T that had holes tattered all over it from being so worn with age and-

Steve had never seen Billy that way, standing still at the receiver, face and limbs slack that the phone could have slipped through his hand. " _Billy_? Billy, baby, what’s wrong?" He had come up to him and wrapped himself around his back almost afraid that he was the only thing holding the man up with the way Billy’s face had become so ashen and pale. The muffled voice had come through the speaker, and Steve had taken the phone from his hand.

The birds were still singing outside.

Why were they singing?

There were people that went about their day walking briskly down their street and he watched them from their apartment window 10 stories up— they looked so small and they laugh and apologized when they bumped into one another and Steve didn’t understand how they could go about their perfect day like time hadn’t stopped for the whole world.

Their world had stopped, suspended in their small living room where the walls were the same perfect blue as the sky outside and the only thing Steve could think about was the way he so suddenly hated the color, hated it so much —

why hadn’t they painted over it when they moved it? Why was it only now that he noticed how horribly it clashed —

why did he care so much about a specific shade a blue when Max was out there god knows where—

"Don't." Billy had told him, not bothering to look in his eyes, eyes that didn’t appear to focus on anything, looking past the space in front of them, past the walls. Billy wasn’t in his body, almost. He had paced the room like a ghost re living its last moments like a record player. ‘Dont’, he had told him when Steve tried to rest a hand in his shoulder, brush his fingers with his arms, hold him and be the anchor that kept him rooted to where they are and Billy had pulled away as if he were a stranger. Steve wasn’t... angry, but more dejected, upset that he wasn’t good with words — what could he possibly say in a time like this — but couldn't offer him comfort in the only way he knew.

Instead, he planted himself next to thyme potted by the window sill watching the people go by and softly whispered to the glass and to Billy who had not yet regained color to his face, "she’s like my sister too." Not in admonishment, but an attempt to... he’s not sure what. Reassure Billy that he was worried to? Worried seemed like such a light word, feather light as it floated in his mind. Frightened, Steve thought. He was afraid like never before. Billy took it for the olive branch it was and finally settled himself at the table were an officer had settled equipment on to tap the phone, just in case Max was able to call someone, to ask for help to give them something anything god where was she she could be anywhere—

Max or Billy’s father could call at any time through that fucking plastic phone. Neil could call, could react like some cornered animal, desperate and mindless when he came to his senses on what he had done—

"I’ve never forgiven Susan," the memory floats by in his mind, a faint one, foggy from drowsy sleep where one kind drifts between the worlds of awake and dreaming. So loose tongued they got in the latest of hours, letting vulnerabilities pour like faucets where the tears wouldn’t. Billy had held him where they laid on a mattress spread out on the floor, the first night they had moved into their new lives. The movers had been a day late in delivering their furniture. "I don’t... it wasn’t her fault, I know that, I know how it is to live with...him. But I can’t forgive her for doing nothing, for just standing there and letting everything happen. Just like I can’t forgive my mom for leaving me. I’m happy for her I really am. I’m happy she was able to leave and able to finally live her life but— why didn’t she take me? Why did she leave? I can’t forgive her just like I can’t forgive Susan for letting him... just like I can’t forgive myself for doing nothing..."

It wasn’t his fault, Billy. Not Susan’s and not Donna’s, a woman Steve would only meet through Billy’s words and his borrowed memories. Would she have approved of them? Was the woman as free spirited and kind as Billy painted her? She’d be proud of Billy of what he’d become, of who he’d grown into, Steve was sure of that. A man that was able to reform himself from fragments of himself that had been molded by so many years by that man. Billy had reclaimed himself and Steve had fallen in love with him.

He loves him so much and he doesn’t deserve this.

No one did. Not Donna, not Billy, Not Max,

And Susan.

Oh god Susan.

His knees buckled under him and his hand flew to the windowsill to catch himself, only achieving in tilting over the potted thyme and having the dirt scatter across the carpet — it’ll make a while to get all the dirt out, their carpet was white and bright and they'd try so hard to keep it clean up until now —

He can’t breathe. Air bubbles in the middle of his throat, pockets of breath struggling to leave, his body jerking in desperate hiccups where there wasn’t enough air for him to sob. "—th me Stevie, that’s in. Breathe with me, pretty boy. Just focus on me. Stevie can you hear me? C'mon, Stevie..."

It seemed so cruel to make Billy have to hold whim while he broke down when Steve thought it should have been the other way around. Billy should be wrapped in his arms right now, Steve with his words of comfort and his support. But Billy had never been the open crier, not like Steve. He could only wrap his arms around Billy too and try to match their briefs and be each other’s pillars.

The officer in the room respectfully looked away.

Police were in and out of their apartment all day and finally a call had come at 4 o’clock in afternoon, 8 hours after the disappearance of Max Mayfield and the murder of Susan Mayfield. Neil’s Ford had been found abandoned at the side of the road, doors open and keys still in the ignition, engine still running. No blood or signs of struggle, police assured that It was unlikely for Neil to try and hurt Max when she was his last bargaining chip. But he can be anywhere in any car in any clothes. So much time had passed they were starting to lose hope of a new lead until—  
A call had come at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, there was crying in the background, the tell tale signs of sniffles trying to be muffled. Steve and Billy had known the sound well when Max had a constant on and off again relationship with Lucas and Max takes after her step brother in a lot of ways, trying to hide their crying was one of them. More clearly though had been the uneven breaths, frantic and unhinged as if he had been running, the fear must have been settling in, the drain of adrenaline and the shock wearing off, the realization of what he had done and how his options were running out. Neil.

There were no words, not even when Billy screamed at the phone and demanded him to say something to tell him what he did you son of a bitch, you fucking coward, where’s my sister.

Neil hung up without a word but not soon enough to avoid the police from tracking down his location. A city in Kansas. They talked through their phone and sent patrols and blockades to close down every freeway ramp and major street. They were cornering this fucker, they had him, he had nowhere else to go and Billy finally let himself slump in his seat and cry in loud painful moans into Steve’s shoulders while some of the most important hours of their life passed.

Because Neil had to know by now that it was hopeless, he was caught. There was nothing else he could do to escape rotting in prison.

——

For Max, everything is a haze for the next few months. It’s as if she had died, hovering over her still moving body, watching herself go through the motions and feeling nothing. She wakes up past noon and sits at the breakfast bar where Steve is making breakfast, he always makes breakfast, and his mouth moves, words are coming out of his lips and Max does not have it in her to listen. He becomes background noise, more static to add the ever present one is her mind. Steve talks, Max never responds, but still he talks and she’s grateful. 

Billy can’t look her in the eye. 

She doesn’t think she can either. 

She looks at the mirror in the bathroom — Steve had pushed her towards the cramped little bathroom trying to get her to take a shower, brush her hair, do something to take care of herself. He buys her shampoo and lotions, things that probably smell expensive and nice, but just like how food tastes like nothing to her, she inhales the scent of bottles from the rim and smells nothing. Her hair is too matted for her to care about forcing a brush through it. She looks in the bathroom mirror, her hair is long and red and she sees nothing but her mother looking back at her. There are scissors in the drawer under the sink and she does not look at she cuts away chunks of her hair in scattered segments. It’s Steve that hears her crying, wailing on the floor with her head tucked not her knees surrounded by the strands of red, red, hair. 

He comes in and tells her it’s okay to cry and hurt, rocks her from side to side as his hands rub soothing patterns on her scalp. She buries her face in his neck until everything inside her stills. She thinks she can smell Steve’s scent, thinks it smells a bit like the bottled shampoo.

It’s Steve that finishes cutting her hair. It’s difficult to salvage, but in the end she ends up with a messy pixie cut. She looks more like a boy, and a lot less like her mother, and she offers Steve a wobbly smile, genuine at the edges. 

She knows Billy was standing outside the whole time, she hears him leave when she thanks Steve in a quiet and unused voice. The first word she’s uttered since she’s come home. Her first word in months. 

It’s Billy that sweeps up the hair in the bathroom and throws it out. She still can’t look him in the eye.

The next morning Steve makes her breakfast and she thinks… she likes the taste of pancakes with strawberry jam. Billy passes her and ruffles her short, short hair. And it's enough.

——

There is a six pack of beer in the fridge and things had been better. But there is six pack of beer in the fridge and Max zeros in on the logo that she recognizes—can’t seem to forget—and she doesn’t know how long she stands in front of the fridge letting the cold seep out and freeze her toes where she stands barefoot. She must have stood there for too long, mind out of body, everything about her goes numb. A hand rests on her shoulder and she jerks back and turns to push the offending person who falls back with a startled cry. She’s screaming, she can hear herself as if she’s listening to a radio in the next room. She screams and it's a grotesque and crackling thing. 

Max sees herself make a mess of things. Reaching for the six pack and throwing it on the floor, reaching down for the individual bottles when they land without breaking. Throwing them against the wall and knowing nothing but the sound of the glass as it shatters, watches the pieces of broken shards land near her feet, the logo that’s printed on each bottle scatters across the kitchen floor. 

Trapped in her memories she watched the same bottle with the same logo break into a dozen pieces on her mother’s head and land on a similarly white tiled floor. Her mother falling to the side from the impact, her temple hitting the corner table on the way down. Max sees again and again, her mother falling on the broken shards of the beer bottle, but knowing she doesn’t feel the sharps dig into her skin when she lands. Her eyes are light blue and open and they never close and she never gets up again despite the booming voice slurred drunk telling her, begging her, to get up again. That’s he’s sorry. He won’t do it again. It was an accident, please. The begging that turns to anger and something desperate when her mother doesn’t move, growing cold on that kitchen floor. 

A similar voice, clear and sober, breaks through the memory with a vicious shake to her shoulders, also begging. Max looks at the face above her—they’re in the living room now, when had they gotten there? Billy stands there and he shares Neil’s nose and height, but his hair is lighter and his eyes are clear and worried. She throws herself at him and cries into his shirt, pounds her fists against her chest and screams she hates him, she hates him, she hates him, and Billy lets her. Still, she holds onto him and ignores the pain on her feet where glass has no doubt broken the skin. 

_Please talk to me, Max._

But she can’t seem to get words out, nothing besides _I hate you_. 

_I know_.

_I hate him_.

_Me too_.

——

They’ve stopped trying to get her to talk and let her be. From time to time she’ll chime in her two cents and see the way they like up and scramble not to make a big deal out of it. Never more than fragments, never more than yes, no, and thank you’s. They leave note pads around the house and she starts to leave little memos everywhere. What she wants for dinner, what snacks she wants from the stores, little games of tic-tac-toe, and slowly she starts to feel herself relax. She misses a half a year of school and Billy tells her they’ll be home schooling her, she ignores him besides a quick nod of her head. Billy is not Neil, she knows. 

But it's hard to look at someone who shares so many similar traits and not see the man again. She feels… guilty. It’s like she’s placing the blame of her mother’s death on him and she can tell it's eating him up on the inside. 

Her friends write her letters and she responds in paragraphs, lies about how she's doing and what she’s up to. She says she visits the beach often with Steve and Billy, or that she’s gone to the mall and made new friends. Truth is, public places are hard for her. Max finds herself in a crowd full of noisy strangers and sinks into herself, clings to Steve or Billy, and ignores anyone else that tries to talk to her. The boys don’t force her to go to crowded places, but they’re insistent on getting her out of her house, so they go to open spaces. To parks or hiking trails, places that are vacant or unpopular like the diner just off the 75 freeway that has the best burgers, but it's tucked into an alleyway and hidden so not many people are there at any given time. This, she tells her friends, tells them that the lady at the counter is nice, she never gives her weird looks when she hands her chicken scratch notes with her order on it, and how the fries are the best, salty and seasoned with chili powder. The lady always gives her extra ketchup and it has become her favorite place. 

That’s where she finds herself now. They’re all tucked into a corner booth where the seats are ripped and stuffing is coming out of the seams. Billy and Steve are bantering and Max smiles at them while she sips from her cup. She’s… happy. Happier than she’s been in a long time. She kicks at Steve’s ankle for flicking Billy's forehead, sticks her tongue out at him when he looks betrayed and overly offended. She looks at the counter lady who comes with a tray of their food and Max bites her lips, an anxious habit she’s developed. She’s tried three times now to talk to her, but each time she can't bring the words out of her tongue. The tray is set down in front of them and Max opens her mouth, nothing but a squeak coming out of her as she tries to backtrack. 

The lady smiles at her kind, “Something you need, honey?” Steve shoves a handful of fries into his mouth to hide his over eager expression. 

Billy clears his throat, “Did you want a milkshake, Maxine?” And he’s giving her an out, turning the question into something she can respond with a simple nod or shake of her head, but Max is determined.

“Actually, can I, um, get a side of pickles.” She doesn’t even like pickles.

“Sure, honey.” 

She doesn’t like pickles, but she eats them triumphantly and smacks Steve's hand away when he tries to steal them. 

——

Nightmares wouldn’t be so bad if the ones her mind played were made up stories of monsters and shadows. 

But the ones that make her wake up in terror are the ones imprinted in her memories, brutally vivid and accurate with shocking detail. 

It’s always that night, her and her mother coming home a little late. Neil getting up from his recliner where he had been drinking. The bottle shattering loud, the thump that follows close after. 

Neil who had pulled her arm tight and shoved her in the truck where she yelled and screamed, the neighbors lights flickering on down the block. They drove, in circles for a while, Neil passing by the house over and over until finally he pulled out of town and onto the freeway with no destination in sight. Just driving, running, the truck occasionally swerving into the next lane until someone honked. Taking sharp turns to avoid every and any police car ahead. 

_Shut up and don’t say a word._

They hadn’t stopped until Kansas, pulled over by a nearby pay phone. Neil had dug his hands into his pockets and pulled out loose change, half of it falling from his shaking hands. She sniffled and shook in her seat, didn’t know who he was calling. Didn’t hear him speak a word into the receiver before he hung up. The whole time she wore a hole into her sweater and picked at the unraveling treads, wiped her nose into the collar. Neil wore his nails down until they bled. 

Blaring sirens. Red and blue. 

Neil pressing on the gas. 

She counted each red light they passed. 

One, two… four.

A spike strip laid out onto the street, Neil hitting hit it at full speed, slamming on the breaks and making them spin. 

She cried as they were surrounded. It would all be over soon. 

She could go home soon, she wanted to go home, she wanted her mom. She couldn’t go home. 

_Step out of the car, hands in the air!_

Neil reached for the glove compartment, took out a gun she’d never seen before. Her blood froze in her veins. 

The barrel of gun pointed at her and she squeezed her eyes shut for one second, two—

A resounding bang made her flinch, something fell into her hair. Max opened her eyes and did nothing but stare out the windshield, not daring to breathe too loud. 

She did not look to her side.

Her hand reached for her hair on its own, fingers pulling at whatever had caught in it. 

She turned.

Neil slumped over in the driver's seat, leaning on the steering wheel. Recently fired gun in his hand, the back of head blown wide. Her fingers gripped at carnage. 

She screamed Billy’s name, she doesn’t know why. She screamed his name even as hands pulled her out of her seat. 

——

When she wakes up screaming, Steve puts a movie on. 

He holds up two and asks her to choose. 

Usually she ignores him until he pops either one into the vcr.

This time she takes the blanket Billy offered and wraps it around herself, tucking her feet under her. 

“Can we put Ghostbusters.” She missed her friends. She misses Lucas and Dustin, Misses Will and El. Hell, she even misses Mike from time to time. 

Billy sucks in a breath besides her, Steve smiles at her. 

“Y-yeah… we can put Ghostbusters.” She laughs when he fumbles the tape.

She doesn’t pay attention to the movie, Steve talks all the way through it. Flashes of memories play behind her lids, but the movie is loud enough to drown out her thoughts. Billy sits on the futon beside them and Max thinks there’s enough room for all of them on the couch. She asks for a glass of water, knowing Billy will be the one to get it, and pulls him down beside her when he tries to hand it to her. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

“I am, too.”

And it's enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: shouldn’t there be like... a therapist in here somewhere.  
> Brain (tired sigh): ok. Do you know how does therapy work if you can’t speak and don’t know asl?  
> Me: ima just skip it...
> 
> Skip that and the funeral and the court case and paperwork...
> 
> I mean who really wants to read about the process of adoption (sweats)
> 
> This was a requested fic for goingdelux18 on tumblr 
> 
> there was supposed to be more Steve and Max moments but idk what happened this fic would not behave at all 
> 
> Things I didn’t know how to fit And show in here is Steve having severe anxiety. There was also gonna be more of Billy a having to handle funeral arrangements and stuff for Susan and his father that would be really heavy and would have to be it’s own fic cuz this is about max. 
> 
> I also wanted to show a more gradual and graceful development from Max wing completely mute to talking again but research on mutism is centered around really young children as a result of physical trauma, severe anxiety, and autism. There wasn’t much (free articles at least ) on ptsd mutism so I I don’t have any reference point for The recovery Process. So I kinda just left at as max getting better but didn’t go into detail.


End file.
